Higher temps move into area

After bitterly cold weather for the first couple of weeks of January, a strong dome of high pressure and an extremely dry air mass may bring record warmth to Ruidoso today and Thursday.

The National Weather Service forecast suggested a sunny high today of 66 degrees. Earlier this month there were several days in a row where the mercury failed to climb above the freezing point. If today's temperature hits the forecast high it would tie the record for Jan. 23, set in 1950.

"We had been in flow where we were getting basically streamlined right out of Canada and out of Alaska," Jennifer Palucki, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in New Mexico said. "In other words, the cold air was streaming straight down into New Mexico. Now the arctic air mass has shifted eastward and we've got a big ridge building across the west now, so out with the cold and in with the warm air."

Palucki said such a turnaround in temperatures is not unusual.

"The normals are just an average of extremes," Palucki said. "Wednesday will definitely be the warmest day of the week. We'll start to see more cloud cover come Thursday but we'll still be above normal. We're still looking at highs probably around 59 or so for Ruidoso. That's still almost 10 degrees above normal. But with more cloud cover we're not going to see so much sun to warm us up."

Enjoy the winter heat today and tomorrow. Over the coming weekend temperatures will be a bit closer to the January average maximum of 49 degrees.

Advertisement

Partly to mostly cloudy conditions are expected to move in Friday night, with a chance for showers on Saturday.

That will be followed by another possible precipitation system at the start of the next workweek.

"The system on its heals comes Monday and Tuesday is quite a bit colder," Palucki said. "We'll see temperatures probably plummet back down below the normal. By Tuesday our temperatures might be back down somewhere between 5 and 10 degrees below normal."